Latest Payton NFL award winner’s charity continues recent pattern of mismanagement

Ayear to the day after The Arizona Republic exposed systemic waste and mismanagement among nonprofits founded by Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award winners, Pittsburgh Steelers defensive lineman Cameron Heyward joined the exclusive fraternity — and continued the alarming trend.
Heyward was named the 2023 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year on Feb. 8 at the NFL Honors award show in Las Vegas and was celebrated on the field during Super Bowl Sunday at Allegiant Stadium.

The league’s most prestigious honor recognizes a player for excellence on and off the field, with an emphasis on community service and philanthropy.

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Heyward had been nominated six times, including each of the last three years, and his work with the nonprofit he founded in 2015 to honor his late father and broadly help children in Pittsburgh was cited by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and highlighted as a basis for his selection. To be sure, Heyward is generous with his time and treasure and his character is unquestioned.

But according to public records, The Cameron Heyward Foundation, which does business as The Heyward House, had its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status revoked by the IRS in May 2022 for failing to file federal tax returns for three consecutive years. It was retroactively reinstated in November 2023, meaning all donations remain tax-exempt, but the nonprofit also never registered to solicit donations with the Pennsylvania Department of State, as required by law, and is missing or has otherwise failed to account for tens of thousands of dollars, according to experts who reviewed the organization’s tax records from 2015-18, before it stopped filing returns.